On this day in New York · June 7, 1928
Charles Strouse Is Born on the Upper West Side
The kid from West End Avenue grew up to write the music that made Broadway forget its troubles for three hours at a time.
The facts
- Born
- June 7, 1928, Upper West Side, Manhattan
- Trained at
- Eastman School of Music; studied under Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger
- Tony Awards
- Three: Bye Bye Birdie (1961), Applause (1970), Annie (1977)
- Died
- May 15, 2025, Manhattan, at age 96
Charles Louis Strouse was born on June 7, 1928, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to Ira Strouse, who worked in the tobacco business, and Ethel Newman Strouse, a pianist who filled the house with music during hard times. He trained at the Eastman School of Music and later studied composition with Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Arthur Berger, and the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Strouse went on to write the scores for Bye Bye Birdie, Applause, and Annie, becoming one of the most reliably tuneful composers Broadway ever had. Annie alone gave the world Little Orphan Annie belting about a sun that'll come out tomorrow, a song that outgrew the show itself.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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to make someone forget illness and suffering is also a calling
Nadia Boulanger, Strouse's composition teacher, encouraging his gift for popular song, as recounted in his Wikipedia biography
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Strouse's scores are so woven into New York's idea of itself, from Applause's Broadway backstage to Annie's Depression-era Hooverville, that the city has been humming his tunes for over sixty years without always knowing his name.
Sources
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